Rough night for Tyson Ross, A’s defense in 10-1 loss at Baltimore

Not much need to waste lots of internet space on this one: Tyson Ross had the worst outing of his major-league career, allowing a career-high 11 hits and nine runs. The Orioles didn’t hit him entirely hard, but they bounced a steady stream of hits up the middle, and the A’s defense wasn’t so sharp. Kurt Suzuki made a throwing error in the Orioles’ five-run second inning, Yoenis Cespedes mis-timed a slide trying and failing to get a bloop by Nate Reimold the same inning.

Manager Bob Melvin said Ross was leaving the ball up too much and that defensively, the team was trying to do too much, as the A’s seem prone to on occasion.

Ross was asked about the fact that he wasn’t hit all that hard – all but one of the hits he gave up were singles. That doesn’t make him feel any better. “The runs still count,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a home run or four singles in a row.”

It was all sort of messy, basically from the get-go, and the A’s suddenly didn’t look much like a club that had won three in a row coming in.

A few small good notes for the team, though: Coco Crisp extended his consecutive steals roll to 27 in a row, second most in Oakland history behind Stan Javier’s 28 in 1995. Luke Hughes, like Crisp back from that nasty flu bug, rapped his first hit for the A’s. Pedro Figueroa threw his third scoreless inning since being called up last week. Jonny Gomes smacked his fourth homer – and that’s in limited playing time: He’s had 37 at-bats.

On the flip side: Cespedes is 0 for 8 in this series, he had that funky play in center and he might benefit from a day off now that the A’s are back up to five outfielders. Cliff Pennington is 3 for his past 25. Jemile Weeks is batting .193 for April.

Melvin said after the game that he is planning to give Weeks a start off Sunday. Kurt Suzuki came out of Saturday night’s game early because he’ll catch Bartolo Colon in the game, which is a day game.